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06. Your journey begins high above Earth on a fateful day in history. It is dawn on October 5, 1957. From the front window of your powerful time-traveling spaceship, the Celestia 1, you can see the wind swept deserts of southern Russia far below, awakening to a new day. Off to the upper right are the dark waters of the Caspian Sea. Before you lies a high plateau of rock and sand situated in a country with the unusual name of Kazakhstan, a newly added member nation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Soviet Union).

13. It is here at dawn, high above Kazakhstan that the Space Age began. You are here as it happens. You are inside your own spacecraft, a sleek and impossibly fast vessel named the “Celestia 1” (nicknamed the C1 for short). Would you like to see the Celestia 1 from outside of your hull? You can by launching an external camera. To do so, click here (once only).

20. Return to Celestia and click here to reposition you above your ship. You will resume flying (orbiting Earth) at over 14,000 mi/hr (23,000 km/hr). As you watch, your ship will pass directly over the Cosmodome. You are too high to see the rocket launch pads on the ground, but they are there.

22. Let’s turn off the exterior camera and return to the controls of the Celestia 1. Your computer has been programmed to fly your ship to catch up with Sputnik 1 as it orbits Earth. When you are ready, give your ship the command by clicking ONCE here. You will be positioned 10 km from Sputnik 1 as it makes a new orbital pass near the Baikonur Cosmodome. It is that little dot in the center of your ship window. Time has been temporarily stopped.

31. Note: If you pass Sputnik by mistake, stop your ship, click here and try again, or click here to have your ship take you to Sputnik on autopilot (make sure you are stopped).

40. Lets’ swing over to Explorer 1. To do so, click here. You will take up a hovering position behind Explorer 1, spinning slowly on its axis. It is a stunning sunset and the lights of Florida are coming on in the upper portion of your ship’s view window, within sight of where Explorer 1 was launched. Mexico is below you and the tropical island of Cuba is just ahead of you. Examine Explorer 1 and the beautiful Earth below from different angles by [right-click-drag]. WOW!

45. Let’s visit Yuri in his space capsule – the first manned craft into space. To do so, click here. That small dot is Vostok 1. To see it up close, press the [G] key. It will zoom into view. Your ship has turned on a force field “cloak” to hide it and you from Gagarin’s view.

52. Let’s visit Friendship 7. Although it was safely recovered in 1962 and is now on display in the new Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, we can travel back in time through the magic of Celestia, and fly along with it in the Celestia 1 as the capsule orbits Earth (with John Glenn inside). To do so, we must travel back to February 20, 1962. Your ship is ready. Click here.

55. Let’s accompany John Glenn in Friendship 7 as it crosses over the coast of Africa. Click here. What a magnificent sight. You can see Earthshine glowing on the underside of the craft. Watch for a minute. Zoom in real close with the [Home] key and Right-click-drag and see if you can see Mr. Glenn inside (our cloaking device is still activated. He can’t see us. Admire the complex detail on the spacecraft. Notice the camera. Mr. Glenn had the ability to look out a window down on Earth. The window is on the other side of the spacecraft.

70. Then, click here once only. Press the [A] key once to activate thrusters, then immediately press the [Q] key once to reverse thrust. Lift-OFF!

75. Return to Celestia by clicking here. In the distance is our Moon. The Sun’s angle on the moon is coming in from the far right side, so we are looking on the dark side as it forms a waxing crescent.

80. Click here for final positional adjustments.

96. To witness the landing and hear the actual transmissions from Apollo 11, click here. That moving dot is the LM. When your ship’s clock reads 20:17:23, press the [3] key at the top of the keyboard to listen to the transmission from the LM (make sure your computer speakers are active). In Celestia, watch the LM land. Once it lands, press the [3] again.

103. A few hours later, the crew jettisoned the Lunar Module Ascent stage (no longer needed), which fell to the moon and crashed onto it. They then fired the big engine you see on the back of the Command/Service Module and returned to Earth in that craft. As a parting view of what they saw from the Moon, click once here. The Earth, our beautiful home, will be silhouetted against the stars, beckoning our return. Press the [G] key to go there now.

110. Would you like to visit Skylab? Then, click here. Your ship will fly you to rendezvous on September 12, 1973, during the 2nd crew mission. WOW! Inside are Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott. As you watch, Skylab will pass near the Great Lakes of the U.S. and Canada and out over the North Atlantic Ocean. Also, don’t forget that this thing is BIG. It is the length of 3 school buses and the width of two sets of them side by side.

134. NASA built five working Space Shuttles named Atlantis, Discovery, Challenger, Columbia and Endeavour (a sixth one named Enterprise was used only for tests and is now on display at the new Smithsonian Museum Air and Space Center at Dulles Airport, VA). On April 12, 1981, the first Space Shuttle “Columbia” lifted off from its pad at Kennedy Space Center on its first mission. Let’s go meet it in space. Are you ready? Click here.

138. Let’s visit another Shuttle during one of its key missions. Click here. The date is May 4, 1989. The place … orbit above Earth near the Shuttle Atlantis. It has just launched and released the Magellan space probe from its cargo bay.

141. As a special treat, your ship has the ability to teleport you inside the cockpit of Atlantis. We have to be careful so that the crew does not see you (they would “freak out”!!! to say the least). OK, click here. You are now inside the front cockpit, sitting in the starboard chair. The computer controls and joystick of the Shuttle are visible. Press the [up] or [down] arrow keys and the [6] key or [4] key on the numeric keyboard to turn your view. Wow! What a privileged seat. What a view of Earth out that side window. Hurry … the crew is in the back but will returning shortly. We can’t stay long!

142. To see Atlantis as it finishes up its mission, click here. Your view is a spectacular dawn over the coast of Africa passing below with the Sahara desert ahead and to the right. Zoom in close to Atlantis with [Home] key or mouse wheel and pay attention to the detail and structures on its hull. Right-click-drag. You can even see through the windows into the cockpit.

143. Figure 11 – ISS with Endeavour Let’s make a final stop to visit the Shuttle Endeavour, as it is docked with the International Space Station (ISS) in the year 2002. The ISS is an effort of a few nations to build and operate a large Space Station in Earth orbit and will be discussed in the next paragraph. Click here. Zoom in and examine ISS and Endeavour from all sides. Notice the docking tunnel leading from Endeavor to the ISS.

150. Let’s revisit the ISS as it exists today and see what all this is about. To do so, click here. Your ship’s NAV computer will position you dramatically off one edge of the station’s massive solar panels, literally within feet of touching the station. Watch as the ISS majestically changes orientation as it (and you) orbit Earth together.

155. If you have the time, let’s test your piloting skills. As pilot of the Celestia 1, let’s see if you can dock with the ISS at the same docking port that the NASA Space Shuttle uses, without crashing into it and/or destroying the Celestia 1. This is a critical exercise; one mishap and you … and the occupants of the ISS might not survive the attempt (GULP!). Your ship has been programmed to take you to a starting point approximately 50 km from the ISS. Are you ready? Click here. We have temporarily stopped time. The station is that tiny dot in front of you. Your ship’s NAV computer is locked onto it but you have to do all the fine steering to dock with it.

159. When you are ready, press [S] to stop your ship, then click here. Then, tap the throttle [A] and accelerate to about 450 – 550 m/s. This is about the speed of a fighter jet. Begin aiming your ship toward the ISS but upward and to the left (use the [2] and [4] keys) so that you approach the ISS from the left side, not from straight ahead.

188. Let’s visit four of the most productive telescopes/detectors currently in orbit around Earth. Our first stop is the most efficient optical telescope ever built, the Hubble Space Telescope. Click here. Then press the [G] key.

204. For a 2nd visual treat, click here. Your ship has hyper-warped to a position in front of a massive elliptical galaxy named NGC 1132. The background image was taken by the Hubble telescope. Notice all the galaxies. The lavender image, however, was taken in X-rays by Chandra and superimposed on top of the other image. It reveals that this galaxy is five times larger than previously thought. It is ENORMOUS and glows in hot X-Ray in ways that have stumped many Astronomers.

213. Our last space telescope to view was launched in December 2006. It is called COROT, and was launched into high Earth orbit by the European Space Agency (ESA). To visit it, click here. Corot is a visible light telescope with a special mission. It is looking for other Earths orbiting other stars … planets that resemble ours … planets that might support life, even … intelligent life

223. According to U.S. Government sources, the US Air Force is tracking 17,000 man-made objects large enough to be picked up on radar. Let’s visit one of them. To do so, click here. You’ll be taken to an old piece of one of the rockets used in the U.S. Apollo program. Turn on your radar with the [1] key. You can see it tumbling in the distance. It’s big! (10 meters or about 40 ft long). Its about the size and mass of a tank car puled by a train. What would it be like to collide with it at high speed?

235. Click here. You will arrive in the year 2010. Good Grief! What a strange spacecraft. It looks like … a big fan! You can even see through it!

251. In addition to Cosmos 1, new spacecraft designs will obviously appear in space. For our last stop in this journey, we are pleased to introduce you to the NASA X-2010 wing. Click here. Then press the [G] key to go to it. It sure looks futuristic. It is being designed to reach space from the ground without the use of massive booster rockets. It is possible that something like it could be in operation in the next 20 years.

6.
87. Apollo 11 and the Celestia 1 are flying too fast to just point our ship at the Sea of Tranquility and land there. First, we have to begin orbiting
(circling) the Moon to line up for a safe landing. The Apollo 11 Astronauts are already a bit ahead of us and have dropped into orbit. To fly
over to them, click here.

7.
93. To do so, click here. The Apollo 11 Command & Service Module (CSM) with Mike Collins aboard is visible. The LM with Armstrong and
Aldrin is below far out of view to the left, descending toward the surface. Zoom in to view the CSM.

8.
94. Your ship is tracking the LM at slower speed. To visit it click here. Notice the Earth far away, in the lower right corner! It’s awesome!
Once the LM passes, press the [F] key and [G] key to go to it. Then press the [] key to resume real time.

9.
102. Let’s rejoin Apollo 11 as the Ascent stage approaches the Command Module. To do so, click here. The two craft will not dock for a while
yet, after they assure themselves that all systems are aligned and ready for docking. That docking is a stressful time. One slight
misalignment and the two craft could be damaged or the docking rods bent. If that happened ….

10.
117. The Celestia 1 can travel back in time to that historic occasion, to actually bear witness to the docking of these two craft. Are you ready?
Click here. Slowly, the craft will dock. When they do, [right-click-drag] the combined craft to examine them closely. Notice the beautiful
glow of “Earthshine” on the underside of the two craft.

11.
169. [Left-click] the toolkit box to turn off your cockpit view. To see the Shenzhou V capsule with its human passenger as it orbits Earth in
October 2003, click here. You will pick it up as it flies over the Gobi Desert, the site of its launch facilities. It’s a beautiful craft. Swing your
view of the craft with [right-click-drag] and/or zoom in. Beijing, the capitol of China, passes to the South.

12.
199. Let’s visit Chandra in its orbit far from Earth. However, let’s start at Earth and fly to it. To position the Celestia 1 for the journey, click here.
The cities of Earth will be lit on its night side. Centered in your ship’s viewfinder is Chandra, too small to see at this distance.

13.
207. Let’s visit Spitzer and look at its design. To do so, click here. Your ship is tracking Spitzer as it passes at a speed only 1/100th of its actual
speed through space.